Prelim Evaluation

Now that I have finished my media product, I can now break down the different stages I took whilst developing my magazine and show the different routes I took to challenge existing ones.

Firstly, I began by looking at existing magazine front covers so that I could see what codes and conventions mine needed to be just as successful and effective.
Here is one example I looked at:

Once analyzing the layout of this magazine and many others I began to develop a similar layout scheme. I choose this particular example to show you because it almost follows the same layout scheme as my magazine. For instance, the mast head is located at the top to give it the most visual impact of the page. So by doing the same with mine, I feel that my magazine will have the same impact. However, to improve competition I needed to challenge other existing magazines by giving off strong connotations through the colour of my mast head as well. I did this by making the colour of my mast head purple to connotate royalty, showing evidence that I've developloped the idea of colour connotation I mentioned in my front cover rationale earlier. Also, I aligned my sell lines on the left of the page because, in theory, it’s been known in western cultures that people read left to right. Therefore, my audience should be reading the sell lines straight after they are enticed by my mast head. Furthermore, using yellow for my sell lines connotates vitality, and the black emphasizes them and my mast head, meaning that I am challenging existing magazines. This is because I want my magazine to appear the most dominant over others and look the most appealing, meaning that existing magazines will feel challenged and therefore forced to do the same. 

Similar features were used in my contents page as well. For example, my contents page uses the same positioning as my front covers mast head does. This is because I want to keep an occurring vibe throughout my magazine, and develop an idea that familiarisation is being used to make my audience feel comfortable with my media product.

After this, I proceeded with adding my image to the front cover. Firstly, I had to take into consideration the text to image ratio. This was so my mast head and sell lines didn't take to much focus away from my image, or vice versa.
Here is an example of an incorrect text to image ratio:

Although this example denies the conventions of an existing magazine, I already knew how to avoid this problem in my rationale. This is because I knew I using middle close up (MCU) camera shot, which in my opinion, is an effective image size for a magazine front cover anyway. After positioning my image to the right of the screen I aligned his eyes to eye level so that my audience feel equal to my model and feel respected because of that. This was made possible from using the rule of thirds.

Coming back to this idea of familiarisation, I positioned my image of a college to the right on my contents page as well. From this, my audience can relate the image in my contents page with the model on the front cover. Also, the picture of the college can be associated with a lot of the sell lines my media product offers. The numbered articles on the contents page let the audience know exactly where to find them.

I feel my media product represents particular social groups through the encoding used within the model on my front cover. I have done this by stereotyping a sophisticated college student so that my audience would feel instant recognition with him. However, to meet these set values of a perfect college student I first had to ask college students on www.facebook.com what they thought they should look like.
Here is a good answer I received:

After collating my answers I tried to make my model represent most of them so that different college students of different social groups can still feel recognition with my model. For example, the use of glasses and the school bag suggests my model is well organised and prepared for his studies. Therefore, students of similar features can associate themselves with the model and students that don't may be inspired to work hard and meet the same values of my model as well. However, I realise some college students may not be capable of these values and could feel offended, but hopefully seeing my model on the front page will encourage them to buy my magazine so they can reassure themselves they are capable. 

The image in my contents also represents a social group from the image of the college. It may not show any students themselves, but represents the type of college's they are attending, showing my audience that these social groups attend highly trained colleges for a good education.

The audience of my media product I am trying to entice would obviously have to be college students of both genders aged preferably 16-18. I had to choose both genders of sex because I can't have my magazine being biased. This is because both genders of sex are equals at college and I don't my magazine disrupting that. To be more specific however, I want my target audience to be those type of college students that are interesting in education and what it has to offer to make there future a successful one. They need to have an interest in what subjects they are doing and how they are going to do it. Furthermore, to relate to them in further depths I needed to know what non-academic activities they got up to as well. On www.findyourtribe.co.uk, and using there research, I was able to find out what tribes where most popular in my area. 

Here is what it showed me: 

Acknowledging that “Townies” were most popular I figured that I should aim to target them as my main audience. Therefore, to attract and address them, I collated the feedback I got from present college students on Facebook and the information from "Find Your Tribe" to use the model in my image as a related point of focus. Furthermore, the colour of the mast head and sell lines would attract them because they are appealing to look at and use colours my audience would define as unisex.

In my contents page, I used direct question to address my target audience directly. This is so they feel apart of my magazine and will therefore like it because it is acknowledging them. Also, the language techniques to these questions aren't formal because I didn't want my target audience feeling challenged. The informal language makes the articles look almost conversational like, creating a very effective form of attraction in my opinion.

During the construction of my media product I have learned new ways of attracting an audience through the use of effective connotations and the relationship with the viewer an image can have. For example, I had no idea what the rule of thirds was when I first began, but now I know the purpose of using it. However, none of this would be made possible without the use of software’s such as Photoshop and InDesign.

I had a vague idea how to use Photoshop to a good standard but I had never used it on a MAC PC. However, this wasn't a problem because I soon learned how to use the MAC hot keys quickly for copying, pasting, saving, etc. Furthermore, I learned how to use layers effectively to make the construction of the magazine easier. Throughout this process of construction on Photoshop I learned how to change its format to JPEG, whereas I didn't know how to do that before and in the past this has left me to problems when the images I was using weren't JPEG.

InDesign was challenging to use. However, I did start to understand it quickly as some features were still the same as Photoshop. I personally would have preferred not to use InDesign because when constructing the contents page the MAC PC's suffered errors which caused my work to be corrupted. I found this frustrating because once finishing my contents page I realised I had used the wrong tool for the placement of my images. Although, my images are there, they have bold boxes around them which I only just realised were there after I had exported my contents page as a JPEG. This is why it is frustrating because when I went back to change it the file I was working with had been corrupted, meaning that I had to use the JPEG image I already had.

Finally, I found this as a trial and improvement process. I have gained new skills I can use throughout the course so I can develop them further, and I've learned what not to do in the future. Hopefully, this will bring an effective final media product.

Prelim Photoshoot Plan

Flat Plan Contents Page Rationale

Similar to my front cover rationale, the same target audience still wants to be enticed, and the use of colours need to be conotated in the same way. Black is used mainly for emphasis again because it contrasts well will the purple and yellow. This then backs up my idea of the magazine portraying my target audience as being royal, radiant and vital to the magazine because of the connotations those particular colours generate. So that is why I have reemphasised that on the contents page.

Whilst designing the layout of my contents page I had to keep similar features the same. For instance, the title of the page is located at the top once again to show what page the reader is on. I also kept the technique of sectioning my pages the same as well so that focus points could be created. Similar to the image on my front cover, the image on my contents page still associates with him and my audience because it is a picture of a college. I used a long camera shot to show exactly what my reader is looking at. This keeps my magazine on track with its purpose because the image relates to the following articles as well. For instance, “What makes the perfect college?” Once seeing this image my audience will subsequently want to read what articles can be found on certain pages. Therefore, I numbered my articles (mostly a lot of them to do with  the ones the front page) with the colours of the front cover and bold writing, so that it’s made easier for my reader to see and find them quicker. Underneath them I used direct quotes, either telling my reader what to expect from the article, or just questions for them to answer in there head. From this, I am making my target audience feel connected with the magazine because it makes them feel valued as a reader. Hopefully this will make them want to buy my magazine and read onwards.

Lastly, the font size isn’t as extreme on my contents page because I didn’t want to overwhelm my reader with lots of big writing. I only want article numbers and titles emphasised slightly, and then my description underneath small. This is because more can be fitted and exlained on the page more specifically, rather then my audience only having the front cover to rely on when finding these articles. This will then hopefully be reassurance for my target audience because they now know what to expect, they will feel confident in the purchase of my magazine, “Back to School”.

Flat Plan Front Cover Rationale

For the flat plan of my front cover I have designed a college magazine named "Back To School". It is aimed at new and current college students aged 16-18 that are interested in what’s available to them when they start the new college term. So, whilst constructing my magazine I had to choose colours that would appeal to both genders of sex. For example, the colour purple conotates royalty, meaning that my magazine thinks of my target audience as being 'royalty' for going to college. Furthermore, I used the colour yellow to conotate them as radiance and vitality for returning to college as well. Hopefully, both of these colours acting together will make them feel appreciated by my magazine. However, the use of the colour black doesn't mean I wish to represent the magazine as dark or evil. I mealy used it to emphasise my titles and sell lines, so that college students would be enticed by the magazine straight away.

The reason I used the layout I did is because it divides my front cover up into sections. For example, the photo of the young teen starting college on the right of the page means he is separated from all the sell lines. This means that he has his own focus point, and my audience can easily associate him with themselves. The medium close up camera shot shows the body language of the student. For instance, this particular stance (one arm up and other by his side) suggests he is comfortable with starting his new college because he is not awkwardly standing with his hands by his side as if he is nervous. What's more this particular camera shot shows his facial expressions aswell. His smile also shows he is happy and relaxed, but more importantly it shows his glasses. I did this because I wanted the glasses to convey signs of sophistication, giving those students with glasses feel more confident by seeing how relaxed this student in the image is. So hopefully by other students seeing this image, they will think that my magazine will make them more like him, happy and relaxed, therefore making my magazine successful in capturing its target audience.

I then put all my sell lines on the other side of the page in big bold writing. This was so they had there own focus point as well. This means within moments my target audience knows what content is inside the magazine, therefore making them feel the need to buy it because it contains information students such as they will need to know. This also means my magazine will have captured its target audience once again.

Finally, I placed my mast head at the top in the biggest font so that it was clear to my audience what the magazine was specifically about straight away. From this title my target audience can associate 'school' with themselves, meaning that they will feel a bilged to buy the magazine and use it to there advantage. The only reason I didn’t make my other fonts quite as big on the sell lines is because I didn’t want them to take emphasis off the title of the magazine. So by doing this, my target audience will see the mast head first, look at the sell lines straight after, and will hopefully be hooked from what the magazine offers.